For most, the holidays will be noticeably slimmer this year. People are looking to buy more practical items this holiday, wanting to give a gift that will help save money, given the current situation with the banks, stock market, jobs and housing prices, so more and more people are giving the gift of going green to help save money. But whether you’re a seasoned greenie or a newbie, if you want to give the gift of green to someone, you might want to enlist a little help to do it ‘right’. That’s where Green Irene can help.
Green Irene not only sells products that save you money and energy, they offer 90-minute Green Home Makeovers that encompass the interior and yard areas using Eco-Consultants that will walk through your home and develop a set of recommendations on how you can save energy, live a healthier life, and during these tough times, save money too.
Consider the savings from the 2 Bathroom Water Conservation Kit Green Irene offers. How many investments do you come across that, for $133, will save you over $4,000 over 7 years and reduce your family’s Carbon footprint, save water, save electricity or gas (depending on how your water is heated) and reduce green house gas emissions, not to mention is simple to install and use?
For example, the two 1.59 gallons per minute showerheads save $2,147 in energy and 71,540 gallons of water over 7 years assuming 4 people use the two showerheads for a daily 5 minute shower vs. the typical 2.5 gallons per minute showerhead in use in most homes. This new technology is so good you won’t feel you are making any “sacrifice” to live green and save money.
Our featured low flow showerhead is a “laminar flow” model which feel just like a “regular” flow of 2.5 or more gallons per minute PLUS it has this very cool feature where it shuts off when it warms up to a comfortable, warm temperature and waits for you to enter the shower and pull a lever to re start the flow. This “Shower Start” feature saves 1 minute of hot water per shower on top of the 4.5 gallons of hot water we assume you save during a five minute shower at 1.59 GPM vs 2.5 GPM.Those who you who take showers longer than 5 minutes (and that is MOST of us), or have older, even more wasteful shower heads that flow at more than 2.5 gallons per minute, well, your savings will be even higher!
Something as simple as a flow restricting aerator (1.0 gallons per minute for the bathroom sink vs. standard 2.2 GPM) saves $707 in energy to heat the hot water over 7 years and 92,000 gallons of water per year. Faucet use accounts for 16% of an average household’s daily water consumption. (Brush your teeth with the 0.5 GPM model and save even more!)
A small Toilet Tank Bank that you drop in to your toilet in 30 seconds will save you 0.5 gallons of water PER FLUSH or almost 20,000 gallons over 7 years (assuming 7.5 flushes per day per toilet).
It takes a considerable amount of energy to deliver and treat the water we use everyday. American public water supply and treatment facilities consume about 56 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year-enough electricity to power more than 5 million homes for that same year. Letting your faucet run for five minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60 watt light bulb run for 14 hours. By curbing home water use, we can decrease the release of Greenhouse Gases because water pumping, delivery and wastewater treatment consumes a significant amount of our nation’s electricity.
So you are one of those apartment dwellers who say they don’t pay for water, hot or cold? Well you DO pay for it, indirectly, through your rent or common area charges, and the price to heat and deliver that water is almost sure to go up over the next 5 years. Tell your landlord or building manager about Green Irene: The local Green Irene Eco-Consultant can come in and replace all the showerheads and aerators and add toilet tank banks and return the investment in a matter of a few months, while the building then saves for 7 or more years.
Having a Green Home Makeover makes the perfect gift for the holiday season or for anytime of the year. If you’re stuck with someone to buy for and you don’t know what to get, consider Green Irene and give the gift of going green and saving money!
This was part of the Mommy Go Green Blog Tour hosted by Sommer over at Green and Clean Mom.
